Friday, September 01, 2006

Short hiatus

I'll be reading the draft of a novel by a well known blogger which I've been
asked to comment on. So I can't post tonight but will try to resume tomorrow. Just for laughs, you may want to click on the site of My Liberal Times, operated improbably by a German who wants to promote liberal politics in the Philippines. His site lets you go on a virtual tour of Zamboanga. One thing that even pictures can't convey is the pervasive smell of durian fruit you find in Mindanao and parts of Indonesia. To say the odor is really strong is an understatement and it takes some getting used to.

On further reflection the characteristic odor of Zamboanga is compounded of other smells too, including the tang of sea air and -- if you are near the public market at least -- the scent of fish, both new-caught and dried. If you wander down to the waterfront at zero dark four hundred and walk through the market stalls, you'll find Tausugs cooking up breakfast in small cafes. In the old days at least, they'd set out a wide variety of crullers and cakes on little saucers and a pot of brewed coffee on a table in front of you. You ate what you wanted and only got charged for what you consumed. There was always something of an "atmosphere" given that some Zamboanga traders were, and probably still are, in the business of smuggling goods across the international border with Malaysia. I wouldn't recommend this predawn expedition to tourists, nor even to Filipinos recently arrived from Luzon without so much as two words of Cebuano, Ilongo or Tausug to their name. And I probably wouldn't recommend it to myself now. But that's the way of youthful memory. Athos counseled D'Artagnan never to have a care because in the end all our "bitter recollections have time to change themselves into sweet remembrances."

12 Comments:

There is more to this than meets the eye. He would not use the word hiatus. There is a message here. Wretchard has disappeared before. He goes for days on end. He signals Doug or DR and they seemlessly respond and no one notices. The hereto undefined and un-noted gaps spawn a free flow of creative ideas. It brought us many fruitful discussions, most notedly about teresitas ear lobes. Hiatus? I don't think so. I can sense C-4 looking for the Jewish angle. It is not in the ROE and another indication of the utter incompetence of GWB and his neocons. Will Kabaka cumbacka?

2164...Illustrative points made about Teresita. As you could see from my posts last night I tried once again to smoke the peace pipe and move on. Initially I tried the Oriental method of bowing. The lower you bow the more supplicant the bow. That was followed by a vow to abandon the ad hominem, even though it's a favorite of mine and I usually get very close to my adversary and whisper it in his ear, which is much more effective than yelling. Somewhow they know you mean business, if your composed and ready, tis a thing of beauty. Then followed the outright apology as none of the other methods were breaking through. Still no reponse.As you may recall I had ,in previous posts tried a rapprochement that she deigned to ignore.The genesis of my problems with her stemmed from a comment she made about my Marine Corps and it's conduct on Guadalcanal. Well I happen to have grown up with boys who lost there fathers on the 'canal and I took exception to her characteration. She never apologized. I poured it on until I finally decided it was time to move onto other topics. I was rebuffed,again.We can move on sans Teresita, and I say we do so.So here we are. I imagine if another poster ever insults the Corps I'll initially react the same way. But let me propose this for those of us who are a bit more pugilistic than others.Lets set up a straw blogger, lets call her Jane Fonda. When we insult, attack etc it could not be aimed at a better name. Or we could up date it to Cindy Sheehan.eg."So Jane you're a whore for the NVA and the failed wife of a millionaire blowhard"...Or Cindy, exactly what did they do with your organ after the transgender operation? Was it done so you wouldn't get the crap beat out of you?..By this method, as transparent as it might be we avoid direct name calling and instead establish a compensatory facade to receive our wrath. Or we could choose that loud mouth Dixie Chick.